


aftermath

by layton_kyouju



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I just want geralt and yen to be happy forever, Missing Scene, Post-Canon, happy in their retirement with their daughter, triss critical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 00:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19284655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/layton_kyouju/pseuds/layton_kyouju
Summary: Geralt cupped his hands over his lover's, but he was silent for a moment. With a slow breath he leaned into her weight at his back. The static whirling in his mind's aura waned, but an underlying anxiety still lingered.He tipped his head to look into her eyes. That amber never failed to draw her in. “Mind if we sit?”





	aftermath

The Toussaint sun was warm and soothing on her exposed lower arms and legs, the grass soft under her bare feet. A sweet breeze carried the scents of ripening grapes across the vineyard and blossoming flowers from the garden. The light wind brushed through her black curls, light shimmering off them like a raven's feathers. Distant sounds of children at play and staff at work between the rows of vines. Birds singing their tunes as they swooped through the lush trees.

A place she could call home.

The past month had felt like a dream, one she had not anticipated to find when seeking out her witcher. A dingy tavern reeking of urine and vomit was at the top of the list of possibilities, but a peaceful vineyard? Perish the thought. But here he had been, a property owner for the first time in his life, the estate brought back to life with coin earned by his swords. He had welcomed her, shared it with her. He harkened back to her words before the final battle with the Wild Hunt, her desire for a quiet life for the two of them beyond the grips of politics and other nonsense that separated them for so long.

After that, they had scarcely left the bedroom for the first week and a half. It was a very pleasant week and a half. The memory of it spread a gentle heat through her body. They were able to make up for two years of lost time; not quite a solitary cottage by the Skellige sea, but she was not going to complain. There were also quiet moments when they lay among the tousled sheets, her fingers brushing through the witcher's hair and her lips to his forehead as silent tears fell down his cheeks, an overflow of relief after so much strain. Peace at last.

Avalon came to mind, of apple trees with their neverending blossoms. What brought them there was tragedy, but those years lingered at the edge of her memory in a haze of bliss.

This, now, was the closest she had gotten to achieving that feeling again. The fact that she didn't have to die to reach it was an appreciated bonus.

However, there was an ever-present fear each night as she lay beside the presence of the witcher that she would awaken to an empty bed, or find herself in some bed chamber, alone, at the beck and call of someone too self-absorbed to rule a hovel, much less a kingdom. The dread would settle deep in her ribs as she slipped into the darkness.

She wanted to see the witcher. She wanted to prove to herself that this enchanting world was real. She wanted the steady, slow beat of his heart under her fingers and the smell of earth and home that clung to him - now that he was able to bathe often and didn't reek of monster gore and death.

Yennefer took a final sip of wine from the goblet in her hand, deep red, smooth with a slight tang. A local vintner's brew given in thanks for the witcher's help in eradicating a nest of giant centipedes before she had arrived. This duchy had its perks.

Placing the cup down on the table beside her, she rose from the crimson silk chaise. Her dark skirt whisked around her knees as she moved across the yard toward the creek, her sandals left behind without a care. That was a new experience for her. She liked it.

Her mission did not take the sorceress far. She found her witcher up the hill behind the house they shared, his lithe, shirtless body dancing round a wooden dummy and blade in hand. The sword met its target with heavy thunks. Flecks of hay and burlap sprayed from it like plumes of blood. Geralt's hair, tied back but loose, swirled after him in white brushstrokes through the air. Sweat shined on his flexing back, over the scars carving across his skin.

A layer of solid flesh now sat upon Geralt’s muscled form. The feel of him as Yennefer ran her fingers over his frame was made ever more pleasant by it. Digging the tips in, red marks left behind, marks he liked. No longer was he a wiry cobble of bones and sinew, a reminder of the turmoil his body went through in his profession.

Being healthy suited him. She had Marlene's diligence to thank for that.

Yen stood there at the base of the knoll, her gaze following along as Geralt’s partner, mesmerized by his sleek, graceful movements. Just as she knew he enjoyed watching her morning and evening routines at her mirror, she enjoyed watching him twirl and dodge. As long as he was safe, anyway.

Satisfied with his practice, Geralt left the dummy in favor of the wooden bench a few steps away. He placed the sword upon it, and, his back to Yennefer, he picked up a damp cloth from a ceramic bowl of water. He pressed the fabric against his face and neck. Droplets of water shimmered as they slid across him, and again the sorceress felt that familiar heat run through her, the temptation to trace every muscle with her tongue and teeth.

Ushered on by the need to have the witcher’s body against her own, Yennefer took her first few steps up the hill.

A force stopped her. Low buzzing in her head, spreading from the base of her skull. Flashes of emotions that are not her own, worry and distress, all churning together. She pushed past the invisible wall. It intensified, pulling a grimace at the corner of her mouth. Her focus shifted to the ground beneath her feet.

As sudden as it struck, the static began to recede. Relief flooded her tensed body, but so did confusion.

There was a wave of dull burgundy as Geralt slipped a tunic over his head and shoulders. A shame, but it wasn't going to deter the sorceress. He did not startle as her arms wrapped around him. Of course he had sensed her, whether from the pulse of her heart or scent of her perfume.

She felt the force again, weaker but still flowing in jagged surges from the man in her embrace.

Yennefer's hand skimmed beneath the front of Geralt's shirt and rested low on his firm belly. The faint tingle of magic distinct to his kind hummed beneath her fingertips. Air sucked deep into his abdomen as his system calmed from training. “What are you thinking about, my love?” she asked before going up on her toes to press a kiss at his nape. A soft noise passed his lips.

Geralt cupped his hands over his lover's, but he was silent for a moment. With a slow breath he leaned into her weight at his back. The static whirling in his mind's aura waned, but an underlying anxiety still lingered.

He tipped his head to look into her eyes. That amber never failed to draw her in. “Mind if we sit?”

“Not at all,” she replied, voice steady despite the panic beginning to prickle under her skin. He _wanted_ to talk. No somersaulting around the subject, no pushing it away, no whining. Unusual.

Geralt turned around in Yennefer's hold and took her fingers in his, a gentle touch despite rough calluses. He led her to the old gnarled tree at the top of the hill, overlooking the sun-basked countryside. One of Geralt's favorite spots on the estate.

They stopped at the base of the tree, its roots and branches reaching out around them and spreading cool shade across the grass. Geralt paused. “Oh, uh,” he hesitated, glancing around. He moved to head back down the hill, but Yen caught his wrist to stop him. He looked to her, confused.

Yennefer gave him a pointed smirk. “Geralt, it's all right. I believe I can handle a little dirt.”

He continued to stare for a moment, thin pupils searching her face. No lie to find. “Okay.”

The pair sat, sides touching, backs up against to the aged trunk. Yennefer didn't find the tough roots rubbing her hip and legs ideal, nor her blouse tugging on the bark, but everyone has to make sacrifices. The festering within Geralt swelled again, intensified. His features hardened to hide it away, but there was no getting it past Yen. She knew him too well.

Yennefer rested a hand on Geralt's forearm.

Again, he leaned into the contact. Craved it. Yet he didn't look at her. “I wanted to talk about before. Before I remembered.”

A spit of anger flicked alive in Yennefer's chest. The words came before she could stop herself. “Geralt, the past is the past. Best leave it that way.”

He met her glare, unyielding, a matching flare in his golden eyes. “I get that, Yen.” He froze. The harsh light faded, as did the bite in his voice. “I get it." He released a heavy, weighted sigh. "But I've had a lot of time to think. I don't want this to end up like other times, with an explosion. If this is going to work, we need to talk.” The words were confident and certain. He did think about this a great deal, it appeared. Yen herself had to admit that it was difficult not to. “So please, for now, I’m just asking you to listen.”

His eyes pleaded in the way that reminded her of a forlorn kitten. He was still the same brooding witcher that had both warmed and harmed her heart for years, but he had changed so much since that quarrel with a djinn, even since their deaths on a blood-soaked street.

Yennefer nodded.

Geralt relaxed. He looked out to the verdant landscape around them. “Okay,” he breathed, a moment to collect his words. “When we found each other again it wasn't the right time to talk about this, obviously. With Ciri, Nilfgaard, the Hunt, there was too much going on. There were other priorities, and we were both at our wits’ end.” His pale lips pressed together as he seemed to regard that time, not so long ago but feeling like an eon. “I don't want to keep it to myself anymore, though. I need you to know.”

For a moment, his gaze locked with Yennefer's. She gave his arm a light squeeze, a graze with her thumb.

Geralt set his jaw and turned back to the fields of Toussaint. “When I woke up at Kaer Morhen, I had no idea who or what I was. Everything felt so strange and wrong.” He trailed his fingers through the grass in front of him, his features tightening. “I was _scared_ , Yen, but I kept going because I had to. I hoped I could find some trace of me somewhere.”

The witcher shrugged. “I kinda did, in bits in pieces, but nothing was tangible. Nothing gave me any recollection of this White Wolf everyone went on about. Those things happened to someone else, not me. I couldn’t pull anything from my head, just physical memory and instinct for fighting. I couldn’t even remember the types of herbs for potions, things I now know were ingrained into me since I could talk.”

With a groan, he pressed his hand to his face and shook his head. A shudder ran through him. “Dammit, I was like a toddler wandering around with swords. It was a _shitshow_.”

Yennefer would laugh at the mental image if the man weren't so distraught. She had a vague recollection of the short span after her release from the Hunt. It wasn't something she ruminated on.

Geralt, on the other hand, ruminated on everything.

His hand moved over his brow and raked through his ivory hair, more locks pulling loose from their tie. His shoulders bowed forward, high and rigid. Yennefer wanted to say anything, but the words refused to form on her tongue, and Geralt resumed soon after.

“When you learned where I was and who I was with, I can’t imagine how you felt." His hand had fallen away from his face, but a pained weariness sat on the wrinkles and scars. "After everything she did, I was with _her_. It hurt in Vizima when you said you learned of my location before I remembered you and said nothing, but I don’t blame you for not coming. It must have been terrible.”

A roiling torrent swept through Yennefer's being. It writhed up her throat, searing from inside. The world hazed, blurred, warped, swaths of green and blue and red. That time, that betrayal, that hurt, she wanted none of it, bottle it away to never see the light again.

The onslaught was so strong it delayed the realization that her hand was clamping hard on Geralt's arm, her nails digging into his skin. She tore it back and held her clenched fist to her sternum in shame. Eyes stinging, world spinning, she grounded herself on a patch of sod beyond her lap.

The dismay in Geralt's aura rushed back with a vengeance. It spiraled through the air like tendrils from a hungry beast as he tensed beside her. “Shit, I'm bad at this. Sorry, I-”

“No," Yen cut in, for this was not the time. She shook her head, her dark curls tickling at her collarbone as she forced herself to breathe. "Continue.”

She promised she would listen. She intended to follow through. Yennefer of Vengerberg never did anything halfway.

A few moments of silence passed, of the breeze caressing the leaves above them, before he resumed.

“I think my head was trying to latch onto whatever was familiar." he said, voice hushed. "There was no distinction of good or bad, just impact, and there weren’t many sources. I didn’t know how to find them, so I lingered near what I had, whether it was good for me or not. I had no other anchors." His brow creased. "She took advantage of that. Of _me_.” The final word was spat like it held a foul taste on his tongue.

“When I remembered everything, it hit me so hard I blacked out. It all came rushing back. As you and Ciri returned to me, I felt parts of me falling into place, the gaps being filled by memories of you.” Geralt's palm moved to the center of his chest, rubbing there as if it ached. “I felt whole again, for the first time."

His fingers closed around the loose fabric, his knuckles catching the sunlight. “And I was pissed. Things were already unstable with Triss as my memory started coming back before the Kingslayer nightmare, but once I was myself again I split from her immediately after giving her a piece of my mind.” Brief flickers of raised voices, streaks of tears, storming off into the woods to begin again.

A dry huff left Geralt's nose, something like a sardonic laugh. “I never wanted to see Dandelion again for the rest of my life. Others, too. I felt like they had gutted me and left me raw like a carcass for the necrophages." His voice took an edge, low-burning anger fizzling beneath every word. "They knew so much, but they either used me or acted like nothing was wrong. They made excuses like they didn’t know if you and Ciri were alive, but lying by omission is still _lying_."

Geralt stopped himself. He pressed his back and head to the tree trunk, the bark rasping against his shirt. A long breath made his torso give. "I forgive Dandelion, he’s a fool, but Triss.” He shook his head, distant eyes clouded by anguish. “She knew what she was doing.”

He looked past the branches laden with foliage to the crystalline blue sky above. Yennefer did the same. She did her best to ignore the snag of her curls on the tree. “I’m not saying I haven’t done anything wrong, because I know I have, but those things are done now," Geralt said as they watched the clouds drift by between the gaps in the canopy. "I want to move on.”

He tilted his head to the side. His shining eyes, typically alert and sharp, misted over and glistened. An ever-so-slight waver carried in his voice. “What I mean by all this is it has only ever been _you_ , Yen. There are important people in my life, but you and Ciri taught me so much. I’ve gone to the ends of the universe for you both, and I would do it over and over again."

Geralt offered an open palm toward her, and it was natural to slide her fingers across it to lock them together. His fingers enclosed her hand in return.

Dampness collected at the edges of bright gold. "I can only think of that night at Thanedd, as you recited my dream of a quiet life with you, and with Ciri when she has the time. Even now, after everything, that still remains my dream.” He opened up his thoughts to her and conjured up images of the three of them, sharing a bottle of wine and laughing as the glowing sun sets over the estate. Himself and Ciri sparring while Yen looks on from her bench, novel in hand, a fond smile on her face. Tranquil nights filled with cricket songs with Ciri safe in her own bed and the two of them in each other's arms.

Yennefer let the scenes settle in her mind's eye, drank them in as a surge of intense love for this man and the young woman they both held so dear filled her to the brim. She found it hard to swallow past the tug of oncoming tears. “A beautiful dream,” she murmured. Geralt's thumb brushed across the back of her hand, drawing her gaze back up to him.

"It's all I want," he said, just above the whisper of the wind shifting the branches. His fingertips trailed over her jaw to rest behind her ear, palm to her cheek.

Yennefer nodded, forcing back the burn behind her vision. "It's all I want as well." Her hand still in his, she guided his scarred knuckles to her lips.

He blinked down at her, slowly, pupils round and whole, with such a serene grin Yen felt heat wash across her cheeks. Where there was anxiety, warmth now reached out from him, reached out to her, soft and welcoming. "Nice when we agree," the words like a crackling hearth on a cold evening.

Yen gave him a feather-light slap on the shoulder, but she let her true feelings show through the smile on her face and her hand nestled in his. "Be quiet, witcher."

And he laughed. A quiet, gruff little thing, but so perfect and _him_ , his eyes and nose crinkling. It made her heart swell knowing that she had been the one who created it.

The witcher rested his head against the sorceress's, his body free of strain. The hand on Yen's cheek moved to cradle the small of her back, gentle but solid. Close. She leaned on his chest, listened for the comforting drum it held and protected. The stable pulse echoing against her ear made the rocky earth and ragged bark worth it.

The warmth of Geralt's aura surrounded her as he took a slow breath and nuzzled his nose deeper into his lover's hair. Snow white intertwined with midnight black. So different, but always there, always balancing and strengthening.

"Thought you'd never ask."

**Author's Note:**

> this was channeled from a few different places. I hate how geralt's experiences during his amnesia are almost completely disregarded by the games and characters. he was a constant victim of being manipulated and used, and ppl who are supposed to care abt him rly didn't do a thing to help, or they made things worse. I want him to be able to be upset abt that, particularly in how triss manipulated him and how it happened to be the one time dandelion can shut up abt geralt when his constant oversharing could have actually helped. in the narrative of w3 it's almost all brushed away except for that one early conversation with yen, and I understand her reaction bc of her feelings and stress at the time, but it's something I think they need to talk abt. so that's what I did.
> 
> also, anything that reaffirms their love for each other makes me incredibly soft.


End file.
